One of the tenets of libertarianism holds that if something is none of my business, it’s none of my business. Consequently, we libertarians generally don’t support legislation that interferes with people doing whatever they want, as long as there are no victims.

That means, as a libertarian, I don’t care if you want to marry your dog. Go ahead— marry several if you want. Canine polygamy is fine with me. Unless you want to marry my dog. I would insist that she be first sister-dog. Or canine-wife. I don’t know what to call it because the Gender and Sexual Preference Terminology Council has not yet released its latest style guide, which rumors say will include an expanded view on relationships.

LGBTQ-etc. issues are also none of my business (note to trolls: I am not equating gays with dogs, okay? So don’t start). But I am going to make some observations about the subject, fully realizing that as a cisgendered person, I have no right to do so.

This Isn’t Called Leaving Each Other Alone

First, some housekeeping: I am not anti-gay. I have many friends who are LGBTQ, some of them very close ones. Nor am I homophobic. When I am around gay people they do not “frighten” me. We interact as equals and agree that our sex lives should be private. I even know gay people who don’t know they are. A gay person house-sits for me when I am traveling, and I trust him completely (although it would be sporting if he would reset Netflix to my channel before I got home).

Anyway, if you wake up this morning identifying as trans female, it doesn’t affect me. If tomorrow, or even later today, you present as gender-queer, that doesn’t affect me, either. Again: NOMB. Almost nothing you do as a non-cisgendered person or person with nontraditional sexual orientation has any effect on me. So go for it.

However, when you require me to intuit which gender of pronoun I must use to refer to you at any given moment, that does affect me. Especially if there are legal consequences, as in some cities such as New York (of course). We libertarians get particularly choleric when people try to use government force to curtail our freedoms, like speech. Telling me how to speak is just as bad as trying to shut me up.

As with most progressive restrictions on freedom, this one works in only one direction. For example, you can call me an asshole (take a number), and no matter how much that hurts my feelings (none), I can’t bring the force of law to punish you for it. (If I were a member of assholes as a protected class, I could have you clapped in irons.) But if a nine-year-old decides that I must use the pronoun “them” to describe one person, and I screw up, I can get fined, or worse, go to jail?

Activists demand that we mangle the English language so a very few people will presumably feel more comfortable. How are we supposed to know which pronoun is preferred? Maybe we could use name tags: Hello, my pronoun is _________. That was intended to be a stylistic absurdity, but it turns out they actually make these, in several varieties. Imagine the chatter at the post-conference mixer.

This deliberate disfigurement of the language creates a special vocabulary—a secret handshake—that liberals can use for sensitivity signaling to yet another aggrieved political class (and to provide another excuse to morally masturbate in public). Designed to be complicated and arcane, only devotees will invest the effort to understand and follow the rules.

Conservative boors won’t bother, once again revealing themselves to be whatever-phobic, insensitive pricks. There are few things more vexing to a progressive than witnessing a conservative acting on his own volition. So they invent silly PC rules to ensnare us in imaginary crimes against people we don’t even know.

Better Understanding Through Gender Babble

Here’s how the mother of the aforementioned nine-year-old transgender kid described the “trans-ing” process. The offspring had chosen the pronoun “they”:

When they realized that they were not a boy, but instead a gender-fluid person, we supported their decision to dress the way they wanted, and use whichever bathroom they preferred. They had a little trouble at school in the beginning, but eventually the other kids became more comfortable with them and now they are very happy, and can express their individuality the way they like. When the other students realized that they could accept them for the person they are, they all got along just fine. They love them, they have become very themself-secure, and they give them their full support. They play with them at recess every day.

Not an exact quote, but the gist of it. A nine-year-old is endowed with the right to demand that you and I refer to him (oops! themselves) in the third-person plural.

Call me provincial (again, take a number), but if this is a method supposedly designed to help us all better understand one another, it is a colossal failure. For example, in the last sentence of mom’s explanation, it is impossible to discern whether they refers to the individual and them to the group. Or vice-versa. Maybe it doesn’t matter— after all, the point is that the kids are playing together, right?

Too Complicated? You Ain’t Seen Nothin’

Before it just left this section blank for self-description, Facebook specified 58 gender possibilities. Included were trans male and trans male*. Same with trans female, although it gave no indication what the asterisk signifies. I guess if you are one, you’ll know.

I’m beginning to suspect the underlying goal is to render leftist rhetoric both grammatically and intellectually incomprehensible. That would save them a lot of hassle in the concepting department. This new gender-babble has the potential to wreak havoc on all manner of human interaction.

Scolding could get complicated: “Pat, give ze back zirs gender-neutral action figure this minute. That belongs to ze and you know it!”

When dad gets home: “I caught them playing with themself in the bathroom again.”

Police dispatch: “BOLO white per, orange buzz-cut, headed north on Central Boulevard. They are approaching 43rd. Suspect is wearing a white life-partner-beater, a blue skirt and blue pumps. They are considered dangerous.” “Uh, dispatch, how many perps are we looking for?”

The Academy Awards presentation lasts for three days: “… and the nominees for Best Soundtrack for a Streaming Facebook Beatdown by a Non-binary Composer are…”

So, with this latest inanity (GENDERMANIA!!!), the Left has added yet another cudgel to their arsenal of weapons to use against violators of their PC behavior codes, confident that nearly all the perpetrators will be conservatives. Screw up, and you’re going to feel the pain. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of being forced into conformity by a bunch of individualists.

So look out— they is coming to get you.

*The asterisk is part of the gender pronoun itself and not an indication that you should look down here for a footnote. This is a clever “mangling-within-a-mangling” of the language, which— if you are reading this— has caused yet another level of confusion for you, the reader. Tough nuts.

J.C. Bourque is a recovering liberal whose rantings can be found in his book “Squeezed: Rear-Ended by American Politics.” If you didn’t care for this essay, you won’t like the book, either.